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SUCRE: Supporting Cloud Research Exploitation

The following topics of future research have been derived from the discussions held during the various events that SUCRE organised:

Convergence of heterogeneous Cloud solutions: Driven by requirements in many application domains, data and service mobility lie among the most important challenges that need to be tackled. Such intercontinental-scale mobilisation of software and data entails both technical and policy issues.

Network Interconnection and Orchestration: Collaboration between Europe and Japan, as well as other parts of the globe in the area of Cloud computing inevitably brings forth the issue of interconnectivity. Integration of the IT infrastructure available in Europe and other regions will produce a complex ecosystem offering services to users over shared federated Cloud environments adhering to potentially different architectural and deployment models. The support of dynamic provisioning and interconnection of resources belonging to independent heterogeneous Cloud infrastructures are issues that should become the focus of extensive joint research.

Cloud of Things: With billions of physical devices connected and interacting, new deployment and monitoring models will be called for. The Cloud of Things also brings forth new challenges related to Big Open Data management. Voluminous, social and personal data produced by existing and future wearable devices as well as by other sources will require new privacy enhancing technologies to deal with trust and security issues.

Projects major results:

SUCRE aims at investigating and suggesting ways to reinforce the adoption of Open Cloud solutions by key stakeholders. In doing so, SUCRE has engaged two user communities whose future computing requirements could be very well accommodated by Open Clouds, namely, the public sector and the healthcare service provisioning industry. Through the formation and operation of a EU-Japan experts group, SUCRE is also providing support to Cloud interoperability and collaboration between the two regions. In order to fulfil its impact in this context, SUCRE has already contributed a number of significant results. Three issues of the project’s official CloudSource magazine have been released, while two videos have been prepared illustrating the benefits of Open Clouds for the two aforementioned domains. Moreover, a set of public reports effectively captures the current status of Open Cloud adoption by the two areas of interest. Enriched with insights given by pertinent stakeholders through qualitative interviews, these documents pinpoint the tangible benefits as well as the technical, economic and political challenges that still have to be met in order to facilitate the wide adoption of Open Cloud technologies. SUCRE has also released a public document that details the outcomes of the activities of the EU-Japan experts group in the form of a set of recommendations for strengthening Cloud interoperability and collaboration between the two regions.

Potential exploitation strategy:

SUCRE is a Support Action, and therefore no technical implementations or technical products will be delivered. Nevertheless, the consortium will produce an End Product comprising mainly:

The four issues of its CloudSource Magazine.

The video products addressing user communities, public administrations, SMEs, and the Industry, which showcase the developments in Open Clouds.

High-impact reports, such as the Primer documents for the Public and Healthcare Provisioning Sectors, and the Recommendation Report of the EU-Japan Expert Group.

The SUCRE portal targeting the communities of Cloud Computing and Open Source, and aspiring to serve as a one-stop-shop for new users and potential adopters in those areas.

The project recognizes the creation of a community with a critical mass as the main driving factor that will help sustain its End Product. To this end, the SUCRE consortium has already engaged in a number of exploitation activities, the vast majority of which aim at promoting the project outcomes by means of presentations at major related events, establishing strong collaboration links with other projects, and seeking publications to pertinent Cloud and Open Source scientific journals, as well as online and paper magazines.

An update since the last Concertation meeting (March 2014):

SUCRE has established strong collaboration links with a large number of projects in the Unit, which are mainly manifested by the organisation of joint events. More specifically:

SUCRE collaborated with the OCEAN and ClouT projects for the joint organization of a EU-Japan workshop that took place last May in Brussels, and fostered an international dialogue on interoperability and collaboration between the two regions in the fields of Cloud Computing and Internet of Things. A sister event was co-organized in July 2014 in Tokyo by the same projects and carried on the initiated dialogue between stakeholders from Europe and Japan.

Another SUCRE workshop, co-organised with the ARTIST, CELAR, and MODAClouds projects, took place last May in Athens, the frame of the FIA 2014 event. The workshop specifically focused on Cloud solutions by EU-funded projects that address problems related to elasticity, migration and interoperability.

Finally, SUCRE is currently collaborating with the CloudCatalyst, CloudforEurope, and OCEAN projects in the joint organization of its final workshop that will be held this September in Bled, Slovenia, in the frame of the CLASS 2014 conference.

Besides, the active collaboration between SUCRE and other projects was also streamlined through the online presence and exchange of information between the project portals, as well as by the submission and publication of various project-related articles in the SUCRE CloudSource magazine.